{"id":4309,"date":"2014-04-29T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T13:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=4309"},"modified":"2016-10-13T15:16:56","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T19:16:56","slug":"a-warning-from-the-high-priestess-of-oom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2014\/04\/29\/a-warning-from-the-high-priestess-of-oom\/","title":{"rendered":"A warning from the High Priestess of Oom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Santo Domingo feature has a title that suggests a sensationalist pulp novel. My life in a love cult: a warning to all young girls <\/em>is, however, an expos\u00e9, written by Alma Hirsig under the pseudonym Marian Dockerill, High Priestess of Oom.<\/p>\n

Alma Hirsig\u2019s more famous sister was Leah Hirsig. Growing up in New York City in the early twentieth century, both sisters took an interest in the occult, which led them to a visit with the ubiquitous Aleister Crowley<\/a> in 1918. Crowley took a particular interest in Leah, and the two quickly took up as lovers; Leah taking the name Alostrael, \u201cthe womb of God\u201d. She supported Crowley as he developed the philosophical law of Thelema, with its famous maxim \u201cDo what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law\u201d, and the pair founded the attendant Abbey of Thelema in Cefal\u00f9, Italy. Crowley\u2019s \u201cScarlet Woman\u201d served as a muse: he painted several portraits of her, as well as writing poetry unprintable in this space. Even after their strained relationship ultimately ended, Leah continued to promote Thelema, though in time she would come to reject Crowley himself as a prophet.<\/p>\n

While Leah adopted Thelema wholeheartedly, her sister Alma was drawn instead to Pierre Bernard, the yogi, mystic, con man, and philanderer. Bernard founded the Tantrik Order of America in 1905, and was also in possession of a great library of volumes in Sanskrit. It is to Bernard that we owe the exaggerated association between Tantra and sex in the United States. He was charismatic and controlling: by the time Alma Hirsig encountered him, he had already been imprisoned once for kidnapping, a charge levied by two teenage girls once his disciples. Hirsig nonetheless became the High Priestess to his Omnipotent Oom. She later recanted her faith, and in 1928 published My life in a love cult<\/em>, primarily an expos\u00e9 of Bernard and of American Tantric practice in general. In this illustrated magazine-format volume, Hirsig recounts her life story from her \u201chighly-sexed nature\u201d in youth, to her and Leah\u2019s first encounter with Crowley in New York, through to Bernard\u2019s manipulations, and finally to her freedom from Bernard. The volume concludes with \u201cMarian Dockerill’s confidential advice\u201d, a question-and-answer segment of Hirsig\u2019s romantic advice to young women and men.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Alma Hirsig Bliss. My life in a love cult.\u00a0<\/em>Dunellen, N.J.: Published by the Better Publishing Company, [1928]. AC9.D6585.928m<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to rare book ca<\/em>taloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Correction:\u00a0<\/em>Marian Dockerill was not a pseudonym, but the married name of Marie Hirsig, Alma Hirsig\u2019s sister. The two were conflated by biographer John Symonds in the 1950s, and have been confused in other biographies since, but Marie (who preferred to go by Marian) is the author of the piece discussed above. Thanks to William Breeze, executor of the Crowley estate and editor of his works, for correcting this error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alma Hirsig’s My life in a love cult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64929],"tags":[3727,2847,72720],"class_list":["post-4309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-houghton-library","tag-20th-century","tag-america","tag-julio-mario-santo-domingo-collection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-17v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4309"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7648,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4309\/revisions\/7648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}